Knitting

Fish!

I made a fish today!

I had a friend over for a chat and I was trying to re-familiarise her with knitting again. So we both cast on some stitches, some with more difficulty than others and started stitching. I think my needles were to small, because it’s really tight. I started with some rows of stockinette and then decreased on both sides of the row for a couple of rows. I then started increasing again, now only on the knit rows on both sides. Then I did 1 or 2 were I increased every 3rd row. Some rows no in or decreases and then started decreasing again in about the same order. The last 3 stitches were cast of, and I had myself a fish!

It curls up like crazy, I guess I have to do some of the blocking business with it, but my no experience is preventing me from doing that, also I’m too lazy for such a simple fish. Maybe I’ll do it at some time.

Fishy!!!

Fronts Fronts Fronts Fronts Fronts!

Sing the title and you’ll know what I mean. I have finally finished the fronts of my cardigan! Yay!

I know it’s the start of the new year and people tend to make ‘achievement’ lists of the past 366 days, but I refuse to do that. After all, nothing really changed between the 20th of December and now. The passing from the 3rd of January to the 4th is equally special as from the 31st of December to the 1st of January. Maybe I’m wrong. If you want to see what I did this year you can look in Finished projects, it should all be sorted there.

Back to the cardigan. I still need to make the collar thing, which involves picking up and knitting, something I’ve never done before, but youtube is very helpful in this. However, I think I should first iron or press or something, the side on which I need to pick up those stitches, because right now it’s impossible. It doesn’t help that the yarn is black, and I barely see the v’s that I should pick up. I tried and frogged (?) it about 4 times before I gave up and went to sleep. However, in theory I could now put it together and wear it. It should look something like this:

Although it should then be attached together, buttons added, with a collar and without all the loose threads. Still it’s starting to come together and I’m quite happy with it, it seems to fit without being overly enormous on me.

So now onto the collar, I can possibly wear this thing during this winter!

Cardigan 2

I’ve also started working on my cardigan again, the black with white stripes one. I’ve finished to sleeves a while ago although they are not sewn yet. (I tried them on by tying all the ends of the white bits together in little bows)

See, those are my sleeves, I still need to futz with getting them sewn up and stuff, and getting rid of all the loose ends, but I’m happy with them so far.

I have also started the fronts now, I’m knitting them in tandem so I know for sure that they’ll be symmetrical. I’ve also knitted my first buttonholes, ever! Ok, it may have taken several viewing and reviewings of youtube clips and ripping out (frogging I think it’s called?) and starting over but I did it. Admittedly, the bottom one is crap, but the two others I have finished so far actually are not too shabby, if you ask me. So now I just need to finish it, preferably in time for like.. January or February, you know, Winter.

Anyways, here are the buttonholes and fronts. The green thing is my monsterbag in which I currently store the whole knitting business.

Projects; always nice to see some progress!

Busy

I’ve found myself a summer job. I clean the homes of old people who cannot do it themselves anymore. So for 4 weeks now, and one week more, I hop on my bike every morning and afternoon and work for 2-3.5 hours at a stretch. Vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms and toilets, making spider webs go away etcetera. It’s been quite a lot of fun actually. The cleaning itself is boring, but the conversations with the people are really nice.

I have found out that there are two things that connect practically all old people together.. They all have barometers and orchids, and are generally offended if you do not want a cookie with your tea/coffee (they also do not approve of drinking just water, it’s got to have flavour). If I’m not hungry I feel like I’ve upset their whole day by not wanting the food they offer. Still, I’ve enjoyed myself, some people I like better than others (and can hear me better).

With all that work (5-6 hours a day), I’ve felt quite busy. Although, really, I’m not very busy, I have all nights off so I should not complain. I’ve knitted a little, my sleeves now have 8 stripes, with the ninth being the next two lines, and I’m supposed to have 14 I think, so I’m at least halfway done now.

Well that was project 1. Project 2 is a medieval type dress for larp (inspiration) that I’m putting together using a light fabric with brown and silver swirls for the bodice and front, a dark brown for the skirt and top of the sleeves, and a lighter brown for the bottom of the sleeves (the fabrics were perfect, but there was only 3 and 2 meters left of them). I don’t have that pattern but I’m trying to make it work by adapting other patterns and some divine inspiration (or just normal inspiration really). It’s going quite well, although the light fabric is printed really really off grain, so I’m having to do some strange damage limitation. When it’s finished, I’ll try to show that. The personal deadline for this project is September 6th.

So it’s one more week of helping old people, then school again. That in combination with attempting to finish my projects, and all should be well. Now, further with the second project, since its deadline is closer. Enjoy the creatives too!

New Project

I’ve got holiday right now, a break from school, which means that until I find a summer job, I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands. So I decided, it’s time for a new project! I was looking around the internets and found this. Another vintage, uploaded, free knitting pattern by the wonderful Liz of zilredloh.com. I decided that, taking into account the time it took me to finish the last one, I should start another cardigan now so I could possibly wear it this winter.

So on to the window pane cardigan, although I’ve made some changes. I fail to knit at the correct gauge thingy so I’m just knitting at my normal gauge and hope it fits, the last one I made was with more stitches and way to big, so I hope that this one with less stitches but the same yarn will fit better. Also, I’ve omitted the vertical lines and made the contrast colour two rows instead of one. I’m not sure what to do with the collar, I might omit it or modify it, but I don’t particularly like the one on the picture.

I have finished the complete back panel and the ribbing and one pattern on the sleeves since I started 2 or 3 weeks ago. I found during my last cardigan that I hate knitting sleeves last because I think that the thing is already almost wearable. This time I opted to do the back and then the sleeves and wait with the fronts, because they are the most exiting (I think). Anyway, this is my progress:

What you see is the yarn in the left top and bottom corner (a white and a black one); to the right in the middle, the sleeves to be, at the top the printed pattern and the second black yarn and to the right the completed back panel. I know it’s long enough, I’ll have to wait to find out if it is wide enough too.

So the only thing to do now is finish it. I think I should set a deadline .. eh .. what would be reasonable. October. I think I’ll try to finish this thing before October, that should be attainable, right? Right?

Well I’m off to knit me some more sleeve!

FINISHED!!!

Yaaaay!!! It’s finally done.
I have succeeded in knitting a cardigan! *dances around all happy *

You might not recall when I started this whole project. Neither did I, but I looked it up on the blog and the first mention was here. That’s September people. It’s now May, it basically took me 8 months to finish something that other people can do in days. I know this because my mum knit herself a sweater in the time it took from my due date to my birth (approximately 18 days), 22 years ago. I was in a kind of thrift shop today where I found really nice buttons with sailing ships on them. My mum doesn’t like them very much, but I’ve really fallen for them.

Here’s the button:

It’s a lot darker in real life as you’ll see from the next picture.. The finished cardigan!

Yes this picture was taken in the bathroom. It was eleven at night when I took it and that’s the only room with actual bright light.

You might notice that it does not very much resemble the actual pattern it was based on, which is this one:

This is because there was much too much space under the arms and it wasn’t even close to fitted. Furthermore, I felt uncomfortable with it being open so low (and it looked weird) and the arms are a lot longer than on the picture. The pictured length makes my skin crawl as it is both too short and too long for what I like. Thus with my changes I have now one finished cardigan!
(I’m so proud of myself for sticking with it even after all this time, go me!)

I don’t think I’m going to start another humongous knitting project soon, but this sure was a learning experience and at least I got a nice blue cardigan as bonus.

Knitting, even further continued..

I’ve finished my first sleeve! And started on the second, I’ve even got proof!

Cool, right. Well it’s cool on my left side, since there is no sleeve there yet. However, I started the second one already, so maybe I’ll really be able to wear this thing this year.

I know the ‘closure’ of this thing is a bit strange.. I just poked a knitting needle through the front so it could close. I also have not finalised the setting of the sleeve yet, I’m not completely happy with how it fits right now, but I’m sure I’ll manage something in the end. I think it’ll also be easier to do in the end.

I’m now at line 19 of the stockinette, there’s 100 to go in the body of the sleeve. Then a lot of lines to get the round shoulder bit, 52 to be exact. Putting it all together, attaching buttons and button loops and it should be finished and I have a new cardigan!

The skirt was another one of the projects, I do actually wear it sometimes. I quite like it with the two zippers, that you won’t be able to see in the picture, but are there.

Sleeves

I’m still busy knitting my way through two sleeves. I haven’t actually started the second one still working on the first. The pattern calls for knitting until the sleeve measures 14 inches and then start casting off stitches to form the sleeve head. However, this would make the sleeves 3/4 length at best. I hate (with a passion) 3/4 sleeves. I always push them up because they are too long to be normal t-shirt sleeves, and too short to pull them down, and then I have cold arms. So I’ve decided to knit for a bit longer, so they just touch my wrists. I hope it will work, and I don’t ruin the thing. There is now so much time in this cardigan that that would be a real shame.

Here is the sleeve.

Knitting (cont.)

More knitting has been going on. I’m really starting to see progress! I now have the two fronts and the back finished. Although I’ve been laughed at for making such small ribbing sections I can now prove everyone wrong. IT DOES FIT AROUND ME!!!

I know this because I put the body together, just to see if it would work, and it does. *does a little dance* Ok, it might at present look like a creepy blue sack with armholes that curl in on themselves, but I don’t care, I have knitted a body and I did it within 2 years, actually maybe even within 1 year! I’ve now started on one of the sleeves and have knitted about 3.5 inches of ribbing (this pattern measures things in inches. I’m so used to cm that I have difficulty guesstimating how far along I am in inches. So I’m very happy to have some trusty cm on one side/ inch on the other side – tape measures, they sure help a lot), maybe this cardigan will be done before the end of the world in December.

Anyways, I took some pictures to show, disregard the hair pins keeping the thing closed on the last picture (quick solution), the threads hanging off on all sides (I’m afraid to cut them yet) and it really is a very nice dark blue, which does not really come out very well in these pictures.

Remember I once told you about a sweater I was knitting? There has actually been some progress in the last weeks. I’ve been going to school by train, as usual, and normally I read a book. When we were on holiday in France, my brother had the Harry Potter books on his mp3-player read aloud by Stephen Fry (!!!). When I came back, I figured that would be a brilliant idea, so I found them and put them on mine too. However, when listening to a book, it is difficult to do something else… except knitting! It’s so repetitive and simple that I can listen and knit at the same time! So now I’ve not only finished the back of the cardigan, also the left front bit is finished and I’m partly through the ribbing on the bottom on the right bit. It going very slow, but relatively steady, and maybe I can wear my cardigan in 2012!

I have had people look at me funny whilst I was knitting in the train. One old man was staring at me and saying to another man: woah, you don’t see that often anymore. And generally people look a bit confused when I pull out my needles and start knitting. This might also be due to my very strange technique of holding the needles, but I’ll just ignore that for now. I still really like the dark blue colour.

Category: Knitting